The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.

The Sellout

Born in Dickens, Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father's memoir will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed, he discovers there never was a memoir. Fuelled by despair, he sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

White Teeth

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2000.Archie's life has disintegrated. Fresh from a dead marriage, middle-aged Archie stretches out a vacuum hose, seals up his car and prepares to die. But unbeknownst to him, his darkest hour is also his luckiest day. With the opening of a butcher's shop, his life is saved and soon he is on his way to beginning a new life with a young Jamaican woman looking for the last man on earth.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship - the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Hamilton: The Revolution

Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical, Hamilton, is as revolutionary as its subject: the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British, defended the Constitution, and helped to found the United States. Fusing hip-hop, pop, R&B and the best traditions of theater, this once-in-a-generation show broadens the sound of Broadway, reveals the storytelling power of rap and claims the origins of the United States for a diverse new generation. Hamilton: The Revolution gives listeners an unprecedented view of both revolutions.

A Brief History of Seven Killings

On 3 December 1976, just weeks before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions, seven gunmen from West Kingston stormed his house. Marley survived and went on to perform at the free concert. Not a lot was recorded about the fate of the seven gunmen, but much has been said, whispered and sung about in the streets of West Kingston.

The Master and Margarita

The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.

Swing Time

Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and true identity, how they shape us and how we can survive them. Moving from Northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time. Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe or makes a person truly free.

2666

Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Gap of Time: The Winter's Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

"I saw the strangest sight tonight." New Bohemia. America. A storm. A black man finds a white baby abandoned in the night. He gathers her up - light as a star - and decides to take her home. London. England. After the financial crash. Leo Kaiser knows how to make money, but he doesn't know how to manage the jealousy he feels towards his best friend and his wife. Is his newborn baby even his?

The Power

'She throws her head back and pushes her chest forward and lets go a huge blast right into the centre of his body. The rivulets and streams of red scarring run across his chest and up around his throat. She'd put her hand on his heart and stopped him dead.' Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death.

The Remains of the Day

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside - and into his past.

Eileen

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman, trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's carer and her day job as a secretary at the prison. When the charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship.

Here I Am

This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in present-day Washington, DC, three sons watch their parents' marriage falter and their family home fall apart. Meanwhile, a larger catastrophe is engulfing another part of the world: a massive earthquake devastates the Middle East, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel. With global upheaval in the background and domestic collapse in the foreground, Jonathan Safran Foer asks us: what is the true meaning of home?

The Known World

Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.

My Life as a Man

At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying-and failing-to write his way free of it.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Publisher's Summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2008

National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction, 2008

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience - and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

What the Critics Say

"[A] wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. [W]ondrous [and] original. ... [This work] decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is panoramic and yet achingly personal. ... It's Dominican and American, not about immigration but diaspora, in which one family's dramas are entwined with a nation's, not about history as information but as dark-force destroyer." (Susan Straight, Los Angeles Times)

"[A] book whose imaginative energy, linguistic volatility, historical passion and all-around love of life (and its characters) make it one of the best first novels of the past few decades. ... A profane and sacred, playful and serious, light and dark, filthy-throated and bittersweet treatise on life as we need to know it." (Alan Cheuse, Dallas Morning News)

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride." It's a fantastic and great ride. The book is a journey in time and space, through New Jersey, the Dominican Republic, and fantasy worlds. Oscar, the main character, is a fat-boy nerd from New Jersey with Dominican Republic roots. The grip of that heritage is the focus of the book. The book is full of violence and profanity, both of which are used with purpose. The book's untranslated Spanish phrases and nerd-references to (for example) the Matrix, might describe a slightly unintelligible world, depending on the listener. But being an outsider is one of the themes of the book. The book's fierce in-your-face voice ratchets up the story's torque and pulls you along, forcing you to observe Oscar's pathetic, miserable, but ultimately (if strangely) uplifting journey. This was perfectly narrated and a great listen. Bottom line -- this is not a book for everyone. The world of Oscar Wao is not a joy ride. It's a jagged, gritty, but wonderful trip.

30 of 30 people found this review helpful

Dr.

Lake Oswego, OR, United States

21/04/09

Overall

"A "Wonderous" but traumatizing book"

This is a superb work of fiction. An amazing story about the culture of the Dominican Republic, a particular time in that culture (the dictatorship of Trujillo), a family from that culture, and a member of that family - the life and times of Oscar. The author does an outstanding job of transporting you to and through each frame of reference. Although one of the best books I have listened to, it is important to also be forewarned that this is a very difficult book, at times, to listen to and there will be times as a reader you will be traumatized by what you hear. Do not take this risk lightly. Similarly, if you are offended by course and vulgar language, this is not the book for you. The narration is as good as it gets.

43 of 44 people found this review helpful

Robert

Yamhill, OR, United States

22/06/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Wondrous Book!!!"

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (TBWLoOW) deserves every star that I can give it and its narrator. This is not a book I would have selected to read on my own. Had it not been a monthly selection of my local book club, I would have missed it and what a loss it would have been.

This is a book about a weird (just happens to be Dominican) kid growing up in Patterson, New Jersey. Coming from that part of the world myself, I can relate that much but not That much... I’m not Dominican and that’s a whole lot of what this book is about. TBWLoOW explores growing up in that part of the world and also the life of family members in the Dominican Republic under a brutal dictatorship. This book is about so many things. It’s about what it often means to be a nerd... to being a male virgin, to growing up in the New World in a family with Old World values. One might say the book’s about the Fuku, the superstition or curse of an insane, cruel dictator but that’s really only the thread that pulls all the fabric of this wonderful story together. TBWLoOW contains many stories that are all beautifully woven into one incredibly well-crafted book.

The passion and the authenticity of the author comes across in every page. There is humor and pathos sometimes in the same sentence but it is delivered so smoothly and, by the narrators, with such grace it becomes masterful. The narrators Staci Snell and particularly Jonathan Davis are extraordinary readers. The protagonists, POV and person change back and forth throughout the book. The narrators keep them straight for us in our minds and there is never any ambiguity. Frequent changes between first and third person can sometimes challenge the reader/listener; again, not here. The book is just a masterpiece. I am tempted to say read this book especially if you are _____ (fill in the blank) but that might dissuade someone else from reading it. This book has something for everyone.

Unfortunately, I read lot of crap. Just look at so many of my other reviews. This book just goes to show that we do not have to go back to another century to discover a truly gifted author.

41 of 42 people found this review helpful

K. Parks

New York

29/10/07

Overall

"Excellent in every way"

This book has soul. Diaz creates an endearing, flawed group of characters, depicting them with humor and compassion. The narrator is so alive that he seemed to be a character himself. He truly is one of the best narrators I have heard, and my Audible library is large.

I am embarrasssed to admit that I did not know much about the history of the Dominican Republic before reading this book. Diaz wove the history into the story effortlessly and memorably. I highly recommend the book. It is one of the two best I have listened to, the other being The Hungry Tide, by Amitov Ghosh.

28 of 29 people found this review helpful

Michael

Walnut Creek, CA, United States

27/03/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Nearly F-ing Perfect Modern Masterpiece"

Talent hits a target no one else can hit, Genius hits a target no one else can see. This novel hits the target of genius. When I rate stars, 3=good, 4=very good, 5=great. This is one of those rare books that I can’t rate highly enough.

Within the first few minutes I was hooked and finished this book in a day. Wao has great writing and great narration. There are a lot of award winning novels that leave me totally flat. Most highly touted books in the Magical Realism genre don’t impress me at all. This is superb magical realism! I love the writer’s narration style and the beautiful non-temporal character development. I am an ubergeek and enjoyed the many geek references. I am not Dominican and enjoyed the Dominican slang and references.

This book has adult themes and language including F, S, and lots of N. If this might disturb you, you may want to get over it, or skip this wonderful book.

23 of 24 people found this review helpful

T. C. Pile

Millwood, NY

07/12/08

Overall

"Truly Fantastic"

Junot Diaz has somehow concatenated the best of Latin magical realism, Star Trek, and J.D. Salinger with a no-holds-barred look back at the ruthless rise to power of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and the lasting effects of that legacy in the Dominican diaspora today. The resulting story is a riveting combination of love, defiance, and perseverance that will make you laugh out loud one minute and weep the next. Truly a fantastic piece of modern literature.

19 of 20 people found this review helpful

Dennis

Washington, DC, United States

02/10/07

Overall

"Oscar Wow"

Diaz creates unique characters and enbues them them with violence, gentleness, and anger. Born in the Dominican Republic during the time of the dictator Trujillo, they escape the country but not the fuku (curse). The curse follows them for generations and is the legacy bequeathed to every Dominicano. Oscar Wao's family lost their wealth to Trujillo but retained enough heart to produce a 300-pound nerd who went back to the DR to stand up face the fuku for the one and only love of his life.
The story is full of humor, sorrow, street language and literary prose beautiful and esoteric enough to make one run to a dictionary. This unique combination of ghetto with ivory tower will catapulte this book to the best-seller list.

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Samuel

Moraga, CA, United States

26/09/07

Overall

"Wao is WOW"

More spanglish, Dominican Republic history than you can imagine - pulsating, energetic with wonderful prose, narration and urgency.

Proabaly the best audiobook I have heard so far.
Diaz has a real feel for the rhythm of displaced youthful energy and ultimately the heart and need for love and belonging. Can't recommend enough -Where is The Savage Detectives on Audio???

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Angie

Kansas City, MO, United States

01/10/07

Overall

"Excellent"

I Loved this book. It was poetic and melodic and I would recommend it to anyone. The language is a great combination of Spanish and English, and street and poetry. I can't wait to read more fromt his author.

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

Glynn

Oakland, CA, USA

27/09/08

Overall

"A True Masterwork, Must Listen"

This amazing book blew the roof off the house, and made other pretenders look like amateurs.

Diaz has huge ambition, and he delivers with every page. Upon finishing this sprawling, inventive, tour de force, I was not once bit surprised to find that it had won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

Do not be put off by some of the absurd and ridiculous comments posing as review. Some people shouldn't write about things they don't understand.

Strap yourself in and get ready for a ride with a master behind the wheel.

24 of 27 people found this review helpful

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